In Which We Use ‘the I-Word’ at the AAR

Attendance at this year’s American Academy of Religion annual meeting was down somewhat, an AAR staff member told me: about 5,000 instead of 7,000-8,000. He attributed the drop to the economy, not to the fact that the meeting was held in Montreal. I certainly heard no complaints about the venue.

Although I spent the Saturday being a tourist of magic, I was still able to make the main Paganism-related sessions.

The Contemporary Pagan Studies Group had three sessions, and they were well-attended by AAR standards, with more than fifty people at each one.

Our shared session with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group went well. Suzanne Owen took on the whole question of how “indigenous” is employed in a paper called “Indigenous Religious Expressions? Mi’kmaq Tradition and British Druidry,” that I would like to read more of.

Amy Whitehead offered an illustrated version of her paper published recently in The Pomegranate, but in retrospect, it really belonged in our standalone session with the theme of “Idolatry.”

Yes, the I-word, sometimes subsumed in the broader term “materiality,” as in Graham Harvey’s presentation, “Materiality and Spirituality Aren’t Opposites (Necessarily): Paganism and Objects.”

The presentations were good, but of necessity just nibbled at the edges of topic, so I think that we will be having a session on “Idolatry Revisited” next year in Atlanta.

Our other session, “The Book and the Practice: The Relationship between Literature and Contemporary Paganism,” reflected one of my ongoing concerns–let’s move beyond citing the relationship between Stranger in a Strange Land and the Church of All Worlds and look at a broader range of “artistic representations … and their influence on and the mutually interdependent relations with a variety of Paganisms as they are practiced today,” to quote the language of the call for papers.

There is a lot more to do there too. At least we are not running out of ideas for conference sessions.

This Should Work for Freelancers, Too


From the Motor City Hoodoo line by Coventry Creations of Ferndale, Michigan.

Spices, Speak to Me

The Mistress of Spices is sort of like the wort-cunning herbalist witch archetype, only with (Asian) Indians and a Bollywood star whose “acting” is very stylized, mostly about eye makeup.

We ordered it from Netflix months ago, and it finally reached the top of our queue.

The whole movie is so stylized that it is more like a music video than a film. Artiness trumps story.

M. says it reminded her of Chocolat.

Will the spices win out over earthly love? Three guesses.

Writers and Money

I am back from the American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal, of which more later, where I also collected a freelance-editing check that I was owed.

When I collected nine days’ worth of mail at the post office, I was happy to see that another check that was “in the mail” was in fact in the mail.

It’s not always that way, as SF writer John Scalzi makes clear in this blog post about writers and money.

3. Writer pay is generally low and generally inconsistent. And if one writes fiction for some/all of one’s writing output, especially so. I’ve written in detail about writing rates and payment before so it’s not necessary to go into detail again right at the moment. But what it means is that if one is a writer, one does a fair amount of work for not a whole lot of money, and then has to wait for that payment to arrive more or less at the pleasure of the person sending the check. Unfortunately, writers like pretty much everyone else have fixed expenses (mortgage/rent, bills etc), and those people generally do not wait to be paid at the pleasure of the writer; you pay your electric bill regularly or you don’t get electricity.

I am reminded of a writer friend’s favorite line: “My retirement plan is a family history of early heart attacks.”

So far, however, he has outlived his father.

The only worse idea than writing is getting a PhD in Pagan studies. At least a couple of times a month I hear from someone who wants to do that and who wants advice on which graduate school to choose.

It’s cheaper to go to the tattoo shop and have them tattoo “Unemployable in Academia” somewhere on your body.

In US Air Force, Wiccans Outnumber Muslims

A friend passed on this column by political commenter Diana West, who notes in passing that there are almost as many Wiccans as Muslims in the American military–and more in the Air Force.

So far, I have not heard of any Wiccan dissatisfied with their military careers expressing themselves by killing their fellow service members.

Let’s hope it never happens.

Montréal Magical Mercantile Tour


A group of Pagan Studies scholars started Friday at the big John Waterhouse exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It offered the largest selection of his paintings ever, plus sketches, drawings, and letters. When the docent suggested that “The Magic Circle” was not really about religion, she was quickly corrected. Poor, well-meaning, volunteer docent!

Then off to the first magical establishment, where we also got a presentation on the work of the Montréal Pagan Resource Centre.

And what’s this? Another Waterhouse painting on a book cover! Extra points if you know which of his paintings has served as cover art for which book.

The shop cat stood guard while someone behind the curtain received a Tarot card reading.

Elsewhere, the price of gri-gri was $9.95 per sachet.

The door to the basement temple promised mysteries underground.

The Writing Life Pulls Off the Siding onto the Main Line

I think of it as my secret Chicago hideout: the “you have to know where to look” Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago’s Union Station. I’m not in town enough to justify a membership in the University Club, even if their building does look like Batman should be perched on the parapet. (The main clause there was a joke, readers.)

I’ve started mapping out what might be the next book after Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca And Paganism in America. For two years, I have been trying to get started on a different project, accumulating stacks of research material, but writing only lightweight paper on the topic.

Maybe, to keep the railroad metaphor going, I was on the wrong track. (Wait, no, that is probably an animal-tracking metaphor.)  Now I feel a lot more energized, ready to kick some proposals around when I arrive at the American Academy of Religion meeting.

If it goes, I will post some appeals for particular, specialized information here as a form of “crowd-sourcing.”

It feels good to have some direction again.

‘True Samhain’ is Friday

Now that the costumes are put away, note that Samhain calculated astrologically (Sun at 15 degrees of Scorpio) falls on Saturday, Nov. 6, at 6:42 a.m. Greenwich time, which would be roughly midnight on Friday here in the Mountain Time Zone.

Last year Peg and I had a little blog-discussion of the two dates.

Scott Monahan’s archaeoastronomy page lets you calculate to the minute.

Check his “In the Movies” link for archaeoastronomical critiques, such as this one of National Treasure.

Organizing Halloween Ritual

I said that I was not going to post any more Halloween items. I take that back. Here is one more.

One decision we’ve made is to rebuff curious friends who ask to join our Halloween rituals. It seems like half the people I know want to be pagan on Halloween. I have no problem with a little religious tourism. I’m a bit of a spiritual slut. I have never turned down an invitation to a Seder. Bach thundering through a church transports me. But when I see visions of bacchanals dancing in my nonpagan friends’ heads, I get a little testy. Certain experiences are too comforting, too sacred to be spectacles. For me, Samhain is one of them.

This is what happens when the news media notice you only one week a year.

Free-Range Kids Have a ‘Scary’ Halloween

One last Halloween post, and then I’ll shut up.

Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry speaks truth to power and rejects the nanny state on October 31.

If you want to see something really scary on Halloween, come to my apartment around 9 p.m.I’m letting my kids eat unwrapped candy.

They can eat any homemade goodies they get, too, and that unholy of unholies: candy where the wrapper is slightly torn. And on the very off chance they get an apple, they can gnaw it to the core, so long as there’s not a razor-sized, dripping gash on the side.

There is more. Read the whole thing.